Amazing 3D performance in VMWare Workstation 8

Yesterday I’ve downloaded the new test version of VMWare Workstation 8 for Linux. After a short installation I was able to create a Windows 7 32-Bit VM with 4 Cores and 3GB Ram.

After this, I played a little bit around and was suprised at the very good performance while using more than only onre core in the VM. I can remember, that in VMWare Workstation 7 the VM was getting slower when I was using more than one core at all.
Because of the new problems with WINE and League of Legends (actually it is possible to get LoL running with WINE again, but the performance now is horrible) I’ve started to test LoL under this Virtual Machine … and I was totally blown away from the performance.
As in VMWare Workstation 7 I had only like 30 FPS when I was on low details, in VMWare Workstation 8 I get automatically the highest possible settings (expect from shadows) and get a stable 60 FPS Framerate. Even in teamfights my FPS never drop under the 30 FPS sum.

For me it is amazing what VMWare has done here! These days, I will test some more games and will come back here if I have some new informations … stay tuned 😉

The only differences which I think could be that I deactivated all graphical effects (on my side in KDE) and installed the VMWare Tools in the Virtual Machine (did you already do that?).
Additionally I turned the Windows Aero effect off, too, in the VM.

strange … How much RAM did you gave the guest? And how much RAM does the virtual GFX Card consumes? You have VMWare Workstation 8 or? I can remember the horrible performance in League of Legends with VMWare Workstation 7 …

what should I write about that? Just install Windows in VMWare, activate 3D (if it is not by default) and look that the virtualizing support (AMD-V or Intel-VT) is activated.
At least the VM needs 2GB RAM. After that install League of Legends and you’re done … eventually DirectX 9 and Visual C++ 2005 Runtime have to be installed, too.

Hello, I am reading this website help insert for future plans on only running Ubuntu as my main OS and handling all my gaming needs from within Ubuntu using VMware workstation 8. I am thinking of playing Guild Wars II, and other graphically challenging games. My question to you Unixblogger, “Do you think that on a laptop with a core i7, 8GB of DDR3 ram, and a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7690M GDDR5 graphics card, I would be able to accomplish this task”? What are some problems you think i’d face? When running a guest OS from within Ubuntu, how much RAM does Ubuntu take up, would I be able to set aside 4+ GB’s of ram for the guest OS? Is it possible to set almost large amounts of processing power / ram towards the guest OS while it runs inside of Ubuntu without Ubuntu crashing or messing up?

so, what you gonna want to do is the same as many people whises, including me. As far as I understand you, you want to buy a new notebook, which is mainly used for gaming to you.
Well, I’m playing with my PC, too, but not mainly the latest and greatest “AAA” games. For example, actually I have no game which is requiring DirectX 10 or later (DX 10 or later aren’t supported by VMWare or WINE).

You named “Guild Wars II” as an example which you want to play in the future. It looks like, that is would be possible. It requieres DX9 (which is supported by VMWare and WINE) and some users reporting at the WINE forums, that Guild Wars 2 BETA is actually running really nice at their boxes. For me, WINE is always the better option, if a game is running fine with it, instead of VMWare.

At least, if you really want to be sure, that you can play all the latest games, you would be better with Windows 7. Or, you just Dual Boot for that. Use Windows 7 for gaming and Linux for the rest. This also means, that a “Home Premium” version or something like that, totally fits you’re needings at gaming with your PC.

Also, you have to think about if Ubuntu is the right choice for you. Actually Ubuntu comes with the Unity Desktop. Did you tested Unity? If not, try it out with a Live CD. Otherwise, there are many alternatives, which all together using the same base (Ubuntu). For e. g. Kubuntu (with KDE, which is more looking like windows), Linux Mint (which comes also with a more “Windows feeling”, including all Multimedia Codes out of the box) and so on …

I hope with this few words I was able to get you more into that 😉

At least, I forgot one thing. You asked about to spend 4GB or more to the virtual machine, while the notebook has 8GB overall. Well, 4GB is possible I think. Depending on what’s running in the background, 5GB could also be possible as well, but you should think about if a notebook with a ATI/AMD graphic card is really the best choice for that. There drivers aren’t that good, especially together with WINE. NVidia is working much better on a Linux box.